Austria to control Italy border, sends armoured vehicles to block migrants

Austria has moved four armoured vehicles close to its border with Italy to guard against migrants and will likely set up controls on a key trade crossing "very soon", defence ministry officials said on Tuesday.

The planned controls will include the busy Alpine Brenner pass, a defence ministry spokesman said - a move that Italy warned last year would break EU rules on free movement.

" I expect that very soon border controls will be activated and that a assistance deployment [by the military] will be requested," defence minister Peter Doskozil told daily newspaper Kronenzeitung in an interview published on Tuesday.

He was cited as saying that this move was "indispensible if the inflow into Italy does not ease".

The paper said that 750 soldiers were available and that four armoured vehicles had already been sent to the area over the weekend.

"These are not battle tanks. These are armoured vehicles without weapons which could block roads. These were already used during the refugee crisis 201/16 at the Spielfeld border crossing (with Slovenia)," Doskozil’s spokesperson said.

Austria introduced checks on its eastern border with Hungary in 2015 and has readied physical measures such as barriers on its Italian border in the south-west, including at the famous Brenner Pass.

Doskozil's spokesperson said there was no concrete timetable for the new controls. "But we see how the situation in Italy is becoming more acute and we have to be prepared to avoid a situation comparable to summer 2015."

Both Italy and Austria are members of the European Union's Schengen open-border zone, but free movement has been jeopardised by the reimposition of controls at many crossings across the bloc since the surge in migrants seen in 2015/16.

Italy has taken in more than 80,000 refugees and migrants so far this year, most of whom arrived by boat from Africa, making Italy the main point of entry to Europe.

The European Commission plans to present a set of measures to reduce the migrant flow across the central Mediterranean later on Tuesday.